Media Power Youth

Since 2000, Media Power Youth has been working to empower youth to lead healthy, safe lives through smart use of media.  Based in Manchester, NH, Media Power Youth’s outreach is statewide. We work in collaboration with health and prevention programs, school districts, communities, research institutions, government, businesses and foundations to provide a continuum of evidence based, health-focused media literacy education for youth, parents, and professionals. Media Power Youth implements programs with the overall goals being to help youth resist the negative influences of media, understand media's role in creating social norms, and to empowering youth to use and produce media to promote healthy choices and avoid at-risk behaviors.

As the lead organization in NH addressing media and child health and behavior, Media Power Youth’s current programs include elementary and middle and high school curricula; pro-social media production camps, workshops and afterschool programs; trainings for parents, educators, health and youth service providers.

Media Power Youth’s upper elementary curriculum, Media Literacy for Safe and Healthy Choices, has been shown to be “substantially effective in achieving its goals of helping young people understand and reduce the impact of unhealthy media messages,” according to a study, conducted in the Manchester schools by the Center on Media and Child Health, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard School of Public Health, and Harvard Medical School, published in the May 2012, Journal of Children and Media. The success of our study is due in part to the support of the Bean Foundation for program implementation in Manchester. Our evidence based program meets national and state learning standards in health promotion, disease prevention and media literacy.